Book 5: The Soldier's Scoundrel by Cat Sebastian

What a delightful m/m regency romance by a new-to-me author! Oliver Rivington is a former captain who is now at loose ends after his time in the army is cut short by a leg injury. Jack Turner is a man who takes care of problems for ladies when more conventional (and legal) methods won't do. They find themselves thrown together when Oliver discovers that Jack has done some sort of service on behalf of his sister Lady Montbray. Oliver is repelled by Jack's loose regard for the law, and Jack has sworn to himself that he would never be so foolish as to fall for a gentleman, so I'm sure you can all see where this is going.

I really enjoyed the set-up, and the examination of class, and in general the pairing of a morally righteous yet lonely gentleman and a prickly rogue with a secret heart of gold is always going to work for me. I found the mystery the two of them worked together to solve fairly compelling as well. My only real complaint about the book is that the two of them would occasionally get mad at each other for reasons that were never particularly believable, and the great conflict they have is the sort that either should matter a lot (and not be as easily solved as the book's end suggests it is) or not actually be that big of a deal. But those issues didn't do anything to truly affect my enjoyment of the overall story. The next book by this author featuring one of the minor characters in this novel comes out next week, and I will definitely be reading it.

Grade: A

Book 4: The Lie Tree by France Hardinge

This was my January book club read, and man, I loved it. It takes place in the 19th century and focuses on a fourteen year old girl named Faith whose family is in the middle of a mysterious crisis. Her father is a minister and well-respected naturalist until an article accuses him of forgery, and he and his family are forced to flee England for the tiny island of Vane. Faith has long idolized her father and his work, and her attempts to discover the truth behind her family leaving England and her father's alleged misdeeds make up the first third of the novel, until an unexpected death turns the story into a murder mystery. And then we finally get to the lie tree at the heart of it all.

This was the sort of book that I liked a lot for most of it, and then the final five pages turned it into a book I loved; everything that I had found frustrating or that had made me angry pays off, in the end, and it left me wanting nothing. It was a fascinating book to read after having read Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, in part because the conflicts within the upper class scientific community in the novel echoed the actual history so closely that it made it super easy for me to buy into the more fantastical elements of the story. It managed to feel both totally grounded in reality and just out of focus enough to make the mystery ring true. I would categorize this book as historical magical realism YA, which is a mouthful but anything less wouldn't quite capture it all. A fantastic story, beautifully written and beautifully told.

Grade: A

Book 3: Wanted, A Gentleman by KJ Charles

Oh look, it's a KJ Charles book that I really enjoyed, imagine that!

This is a standalone regency romance with a framing device I found quite clever - one of the two main characters, Theo, is a writer of romantic melodramas, and the story itself fits within that genre. The characters have an awareness of that at times, but it never collapses under the weight of the meta, and the central love story is charming and compelling.

In addition to writing novels, Theo also runs the equivalent of a personal ads publication. One of the people using his service is the daughter of the former master of Martin St. Vincent, a black man who had been freed by his owner at the age of eighteen. His former master asked him to put a stop to the romance between his daughter and an unknown man, and Martin then enlists Theo's assistance in this matter.

One of the things I love about KJ Charles's books is that she writes historical romances that don't gloss over the realities of an earlier era in order to give the reader a nice romance. Instead she works within that reality to show us a more complete picture while also giving characters we don't often focus on - a free black man and a working class white man in a big financial bind - a chance for a believable and satisfying happy ending. All this while crafting a romance that's well-explored and very sexy. I always feel like I'm getting the chance to read something brand new from her that also scratches the romance itch. I am already looking forward to my first reread of this book.

Grade: A 

Book 2: The Long Road Home by Sarah Granger

Sarah Granger wrote one of my favorite m/m historical romance novels (A Minor Inconvenience), so last night I decided to check to see if she'd published any other historical romances that I had missed. This one is more of a novella, and it's kind of a quintessential early book - I can see the foundation for what made A Minor Inconvenience such a delightful book, but The Long Road Home is lacking both the depth and the conflict that made her later book so wonderful.

The story is set in a non-specific historical era, with ruling princes and horses and wars fought and won with bows and arrows and swords, but there's no attempt to actually ground it anyplace or time. Basically, a visiting prince stays at Sir Andrew's estate, and he takes a fancy to the groom, who's wonderful with horses and also is a veteran of the same war the prince himself fought in. There are allusions to secret traumatic pasts for both of them, but we never really get into their backstories, and while the banter between the two of them is readable enough, I never got a sense of why they were supposed to be in love rather than just enjoying a tumble in the hay. The dangers of rummaging through an author's back catalog, I suppose.

Grade: C 

Book 1: The Summer Palace by CS Pacat

Man, I really wanted to love this post-series short story for the Captive Prince books, but I did not. Spoilers for the series and thoughts on what didn't work for me and why under the cut.

2017 Master List

Here is my list of books to read in 2017! There are currently 55 books on the list, which compared with the 132 that I was trying to read last year seems VERY SHORT. However, I can add more books to this list, unlike last year's, when I was deliberately not acquiring new books to read. There are other books that I'm interested in reading this year that I don't own yet (or have requested from the library), like the Rivers of London series and Six of Crows, but I'm not going to add them to the list until I actually have a copy of them. It's so strange, I really do feel like I should be able to just knock all of these books out, but given that we're nine days into 2017 and I've only read one novella so far, my reading pace will have to pick up a lot for that to be the case! Let's see how it goes.

Book 98: A Private Miscellany by KJ Charles

What a lovely little post-series short story this is. A free download for subscribers to her newsletter, this is just a delightful epilogue of sorts to the Society of Gentlemen books. One of my favorite aspects of it is that it's told via letters and newspaper postings interwoven with straightforward prose, which really made me appreciate again how strong her voices are - there's a specificity to all of her characters' voices that is especially wonderful in historical romance.

The story focuses on all four of the main couples to some extent, but the relationship that really gets the chance to shine in my opinion is Silas and Dom. I love the future that she's created for them, and I loved how the scene we get with them (along with bits of correspondence between the two of them and other characters) furthers our understanding of who they are and how they work together, while also being insanely hot. It made me want to go back and reread the entire series again, starting with the short story that kicks it all off. Hers is a newsletter well worth subscribing for, no question.

Grade: A